The Baby Outside Your House

Imagine that you wake up one Saturday morning, and you find a Baby left outside your door. Your surprise turns into shock when you realize that it has been kept outside your door and not your neighbor’s. The Baby starts wailing, and it hits you. The Baby has become your responsibility.

You are still in denial. Instead of figuring out what to do, you start complaining about how unfair the situation is. Why me? What have I done to deserve this? Meanwhile, the Baby starts wailing more, and that is when some chord that strikes within you. There is a voice inside your head that starts telling you- It’s your problem now. Deal with it.

You accept that you have no choice but to take responsibility for the Baby. You feel empowered to deal with the problem and you start evaluating your options. One, you may say, I need help and you decide to go to the police. Two, you may decide to drop everything and go in search of the mother. Three, you may say, I always wanted a Baby, and you may decide to keep it.

No matter what option you choose, there would be some problems and consequences. And, since the Baby was left in front of your house, the responsibility and the consequences are yours.

When you take responsibility for the problem, you say to yourself, ” The Baby’s welfare is on me. I am responsible for what happens to the Baby from this moment onwards. I cannot blame anyone else for whatever happens. It’s on me”.

The Baby in this story is a metaphor for the problems and challenges we encounter in our life. If we take responsibility and decide to deal with them, we are in control. When we assume responsibility, we discover the power within ourselves to identify choices to deal with the problems and solve them in the best manner possible. We may pawn off the problem(and the Baby) to someone else, but we know deep down that we abdicated our responsibility. We will bear the cross, knowing that we let ourselves and the Baby down.

I picked up the idea for this story from a great book by Mark Manson, ” The art of not giving a Fu*k.”

Mark Manson, in this Book, gives a twist to the famous Spiderman quote-

“With great responsibility comes great power- The power to act and do good.”